NLE Mac / Final Cut questions from 2002

[Ken Tanaka]

John & Vic,

Couldn't you have at least had the courtesy to tell me "..aww, it's not such a great box. I guess it's ok if you gotta have a Mac. No problems." But nooo, you've gotta pour gasoline on the fire. You guys are really sadistic.

Gonna do it.

Thanks <grimmace>

[Vic Owen]

Well, it's still the same damn color, so maybe it's not so great after all......It has, however, learned to make coffee in the morning and warm up the car!

After pondering it for awhile, I've decided that when FCP arrives on my doorstep, I'm gonna take the plunge and load it into OS-10. What the heck, I can always drop back, but this will force me to learn the new system. OS-9 is way too comfortable.

I popped a big Seagate Barracuda scratch disk into the puppy, and discovered that the main 80GB drive is also a Barracuda. After working with PCs a lot, I'm always amazed at the easy access to the newer MACS. Took about 5 minutes.

Go for it, Ken. It'll drive you nuts until you do!

Cheers

[Ken Tanaka]

Vic,
Re: FCP3, note that you can install it under both OS 10 and OS 9 (they are separate installations). You can alternate boot-up OS's pretty easily and, as you do so, FCP3 will be available on either OS. The FCP3 installation threw me for an hour or so; I couldn't understand why I needed to install it twice.

Re: easy device access on the Macs, I agree. I've been a PC-only person since 1983/84 until just over a year ago. The Mac device model gob-smacked me at first. How much simpler it is to assign drives -names- instead of serial -lettersl. Why not just flip the side panel of the tower unit down (as on a Mac) instead of trying to shove your head and hands into the PC's case? (Yes, some of Compaq's systems recently began featuring a similar design but most PC's still do not.) And on, and on.

I've not become a flaming-hair Mac fanatic. But I can certainly be called an enthusiastic user for video and graphic applications.

[John Locke]

Ken,

You use an XL-1, right? Did you have to add the two extra files...I think one is called "DV Codec" and the other is "CMP something" or similar?

They're included on the FCP 3.0 disc but aren't automatically installed (or so I've heard).

I've only used FCP3.0 so far to work on existing projects that were started in FCP 2. But I've been reading in other forums that some people are having trouble capturing without these two files.

I'll be capturing some new footage this weekend, so wanted to know if I should install those two files. This was mentioned in an earlier forum here, I believe, and I mentioned using iMovie as an alternative. I mentioned "capturing" but actually was using the wrong term since the footage was already on my hard disc but just had to be "imported" into FCP.

[Ken Tanaka]

John,
I do use an XL1 and XL1s but I capture from my Panasonic deck (with no trouble). I think the files you're thinking of are in the "Extras/DV Camera Tuner Scripts" folder of the FCP3 CD. There are files: "CMP Override", "DV Tuner 1" and "DV Tuner 2" in that folder. These are plug-ins that some cameras and devices require for proper capture functionality.

I don't think that the XL1 requires a special plug-in for proper capture since it qualifies under "Firewire Basic" specs. Peruse the page:

http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/qualification.html

I recall that version 1.2.5 was fussy about plug-ins for proper GL1 operation but that was the last I really heard of it. (Apparently it still needs the "DV Tuner 2" plug-in for proper operation.)

[John Locke]

Thanks, Ken. I'll check it out this weekend.

The link you gave says something interesting

<< When the Canon XL1 is editing to tape, it will come in up to 6 frames early, then duplicate that first frame up to 15 frames. >>

I never had that problem before with FCP 2.0. Hope that doesn't start now with FCP 3.0.

[Vic Owen]

I also do my capturing and mastering with a Panasonic deck (DV2000) so it sounds like that part should go smoothly. Ken, did FCP actually require an install in both systems, or did you just elect to do so?

[Ken Tanaka]

Vic,

I initially installed FCP3 while running OS 9 (from the OS 9 installation folder), thinking that I could just boot into 10 and run the same executable. But it balked under 10. So I also installed under 10 (using the OS 10 installation folder on the CD) and now both versions coexist in their parallel universes. Each version does install differently. The OS 10 FCP3 places just the naked app file in an "Applications" folder. All other files (ex: plugins, custom settings) go into "System Folder / Application Suport" folder. The OS 9 installed everything (except Preferences) in the "Final Cut Pro" folder under the root.

The documentation is not very explicit regarding dual-boot installation so I might have mis-stepped. But all seems to operate fine under both OS's.

[Steve Nunez]

Hello everyone,

just curious as to wether some of you are using or have tried Apple's iDVD software for creating dvd's.....how do you like the software's mpeg2 treatment of your XL video? Any comments?

I've tried it myself and while generally pleased i find the video just shy of perfect- I can see some "interlacing" of moving images which seems to go away when slow moving objects are onscreen...the minute fast action appears i'm getting a sort of "interlacing" (hope i am using the correct term- looks like small dashes in high-motion areas)..was wondering if anyone else has experienced this...and i'm wondering if it's an XL video thing or iDVD software thing (I don't see it when watching the video on a tv screen directly from the mini-DV tape).....in all fairness I have yet to see the DVD on a tv screen- only on a computer monitor (maybe that's the interlacing problem i've noticed??).......

....anyway was just hoping some of you have used iDVD and what did you guys think of the software's treatment of your XL video.

Have fun- you only live once!!

[Ken Tanaka]

Steve,
I'm working with iDVD right now and have had pretty good luck on the encoding front (but am having a difficult time with another matter). The DVD's I've burned to-date have been pretty faithful, although their content has been far from professionally produced.

Off-hand I can only think of 2 situations that might leave your MPEG2 a bit ragged. (a) If you try to put more than an hour of material on the DVD iDVD will compress the footage more deeply. (b) If your footage was brought in smaller than 720x480 iDVD will scale it up to fit.

Take a look at the DVD on a television to see if you can detect the same motion/interlacing jaggies as you see on your computer monitor.

[Steve Nunez]

Ken,

Mac's are amazing aren't they?

Prior to burning the DVD (during compilation) iDVD did prompt me and say that there was more than 60 min of content and that the video content would decline in quality slightly...but in actuality there was only about 19 min of actual DV footage- the rest were slideshow images that i'm assuming get encoded into an mpeg2 at whatever screen rate DVD's use.......this is the likely reason iDVD prompted me with such a message.....

...my 60" TV is on the outs so I can't view it there- but will try soon on another set.......

Ken which Mac did you get with the superdrive?

I picked up the 933 mhz model w/SuperDrive at B&H in Manhattan- so far the system works like a charm.
Mac's rule!

[Ken Tanaka]

<<-- Steve: Ken which Mac did you get with the superdrive? -->

Actually I cheated. I bought my first Mac (G4 Dual 500MHz) in Oct 2000 before the Superdrives were shipping. Mine came with a relatively useless DVD-RAM drive. Last year I bought a Pioneer A03 and retrofitted my Mac with it. Worked fine. This week I'll be receiving a dual 1GHz G4 with 1Gb RAM and am anxious to see the performance difference.

My relationship with the Mac has been one of love/hate but, on the love side are the FCP3, iDVD, DVD Studio Pro, Commotion Pro and After Effects. This suite makes putting up with the Apple platform well worthwhile for me. I would be hard pressed to ever try to use my Win systems for these funtions.

[Charles Papert]

Ken:

I just got the dual 1 ghz setup, and since I'm new to DVD burning, how critical is it that I get DVD Studio Pro (especially with iDVD2)? Obviously there are more possibilities available with Studio Pro, but for general purpose useage, how much am I missing. Also, I'm looking to archive a bunch of old VHS tapes that are 2 hours long--will I be able to make 2 hour DVD's at VHS quality with Studio Pro?

[Joe Redifer]

The reason that I would get DVD Studio Pro is because it allows you to mix sound in 5.1 channel Dolby Digital. To me that is just awesome. Even though I haven't burned a single DVD in my life, I imagine that the differences between DVD Studio Pro and iDVD would be like the differences between Final Cut Pro and iMovie. iMovie tends to lead towards making family videos with nothing too fancy. I'm sure that for archiving VHS tapes iDVD will be fine. DOn't know about the two hour quality, though. Usually MPEG2 hiccups at gradual transitions (dissolves, fades, etc). The video will look fine with higher compression until one of these transitions comes along, and then you will notice a difference.

[Ken Tanaka]

DVD Studio Pro is really designed to handle more elaborate menus, sound and behaviors (ex; chaptering, etc.) than iDVD which just provides a way to make basic menus and encode your content to the disc. Joe's analogy of FCP -vs- iMovie is a pretty apt one.

Apple has a very good FAQ page on the subject at:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60799

Re: Putting 2hrs of material on one DVD I don't know. I've never gone beyond approx 80 mins. To some degree it will depend on how much space your supplementary material occupies (menus, etc.). DVD-R General discs are, by design, more limited in capacity than the "authoring" discs. The ever-paranoid Hollywood folks made sure of that.